WSL / Ubuntu / ZSH and Hyper Terminal

What is Windows Subsystem for Linux? It’s basically to run a Linux environment in Windows OS

Even if it wasn’t really stable at the beginning, a lot of improvements have been made.

At work I have quite a lot of work and users support tasks which need to be done in a Windows environment, that’s why I’m mainly working in a Windows environment. Of course I have some stand-alone or managed VM (with Vagrant) for development purpose, however I don’t always want to boot up a Linux VM to do some minor changes.

Before WSL exists, I have tried Cygwin and Babun but it felt clunky compared to a real Linux environment, especially for packages installations/updates.

Now if you are using W10, big chances you have already WSL installed.

Install & Configure WSL

If not, you can enable it here:

1) Launch Add or remove programs

2) On the left in the section Related settings, open Programs and Features

3) A new window shows up, click Turn Windows features on or off

4) Find in the list Windows Subsystem for Linux and enable it

Once WSL installed, reboot and launch bash.exe or wsl.exe to start a new shell.
A welcome message appear and warn you that no Linux OS is actually installed.

You can click the URL in the message to download Ubuntu as a default WSL OS.

Other OS are supported now, you can check available OS in the Windows Store.

It can take some time to download and install the OS image based on your internet connection.

When done, you should have access to a terminal with a shell session (Bash by default).

By default WSL is intalled on your Windows partition and depending on the packages you install, this can take a lot of space on your hard disk. Unfortunately, for the moment it’s not possible to choose on which partition you want to install WSL during the installation. My Windown OS is actually installed on a SSD and I don’t have so much space, so I try to be careful on what package I install.